Stories of hail damage make solar developers and O&Ms cringe because every incident makes project insurance harder to find and more expensive (plus feeling the pain for people who have to deal with the affected project). The damage at the Fighting Jays solar project is the latest example and needs to be examined from a standpoint of preventing damage at projects in the future.
Interestingly, there are three other projects within a 3 mile radius around Guy, TX that were hit by the same storm: Orsted's "Old 300 Solar Center", Advanced Power's "Cutlass Solar", and Sabanci Renewables' "Cutlass Solar II". The main news story about Fighting Jays came from ABC 13's drone footage, so I presume they had the opportunity to fly the other sites and didn't see significant damage.
Regardless of how the other sites fared, it's a good opportunity to compare materials and best practices. In addition to thicker glass and fast-stow trackers, I think the industry should examine the steps taken when severe weather is approaching. While projects often have little warning if there is confirmed hail or a Severe Thunderstorm warning issued by the National Weather Service, the conditions that allow for hail are usually known hours and even days in advance. For example, the Storm Prediction Center office of the NWS forecasts hail risk up to 3 days ahead.
A multi-step procedure as storms approach would put trackers in position to get the benefits of fast stow even without that system installed. This would have to be measured against the energy production and contract requirements of the plant but could yield enough savings in reduced storm risk to overcome that. This would also have the benefit of being an option for existing projects, not just new-builds. Hopefully the utility-scale solar industry can figure out a long-term solution to this problem.
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